More on the Blue Coat web filters

Yesterday I wrote about the USPTO blocking KEI and many other NGOs, blogs and news organizations from their public wifi service. The USPTO says this practice has been discontinued, as of last evening (more here: http://keionline.org/node/1548) but I found the issue interesting enough to follow up a bit. What I have found is more troubling than the initial case described yesterday.

The company providing the filtering services to the USPTO is Blue Coat (http://bluecoat.com). Blue Coat offers businesses, schools, federal agencies, foreign governments and others many different possible filters, and these are used in a variety of agency settings, including to filter content available to federal employees. This is how Blue Coat describes the "Political/Activist" filter:

Political/Activist Groups
Sites sponsored by or that provide information on political parties, special interest groups, or any organization that promotes change or reform in public policy, public opinion, social practice, or economic activities.

A different filter, that we have not explored, illustrates the wide range of topics and value judgements that organizations and governments contract out to Blue Coat.

Alternative Spirituality/Belief

Sites that promote and provide information on a wide range of non-traditional and/or non-religious spiritual, existential, experiential, and philosophical belief systems. Includes sites related to atheism, agnosticism, and mysticism; sites related to quasi-religious, philosophical or spiritual belief systems and practices that do not include formally established religious meetings, places of worship, organizational structure, or dogma; and sites that endorse or offer information about affecting or influencing real events through supernatural or magical means. Also includes sites that discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events. This category does not include sites centered around traditional, organized religious belief, practice, and observance (Religion).

These is just two of dozens of filters that Blue Coat manages. (See list of basic U.S. categories here).

What types of web sites are blocked by the Blue Coat filters? Well, lots, but it is not obvious what gets you in or out of the list. For example, as regards the Political/Activist filter, apparently corporate trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce, MPAA, RIAA or PhRMA are out, but critics of strong IPR protection are often in. Here are a few examples of cases where the use of particular Blue Coat filters have been questioned.

1. AFL-CIO is considered "Political/Activist." US Chamber of Commerce and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation are considered Government/Legal, a category rarely filtered.

July 29, 2011. Posted by Scott. Blue Coat website rating system
It appears that the Army NIPR system in Korea is using a new filtering system to block websites. Its sad to say that Atheist Nexus is on the blocked list. . . .We are currently labeled as Political/Activist Groups and Social Networking.

3. The ACLU has complained to the Prince William County Public Schools that Blue Coat blocks access to sites about Gay and Lesbian related context. Ironically, the ACLU is also blocked by Blue Coat under the Political/Activist filter.

Recently, the Global Voices team learned that this site, http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org, is blocked at the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, D.C. As is common practice for many companies and organizations, the NSF uses filtering software to block a number of websites. Such filtering typically targets pornography and illegal content, but many organizations take the practice further. . . .

I’m pretty surprised to learn that the scientists at NSF are working in a filtered internet environment, and that the filtering is so aggressive that discussion of internet filtering and circumvention can’t be discussed. One wonders whether the State Department might consider offering some trainings for the National Science Foundation so that employees there can learn side by side with Chinese dissidents how to overcome filtering and learn about State Department sponsored research on internet filtering. Maybe we can sneak into the building with Tor on USB keys and clandestinely smuggle them to oppressed US scientists.

7. Several blogs and new stories about Blue Coat's filtering technology use in Syria and Burma.

I have known for several years that my website was banned in the Aldine Texas school district. I waited until they won the 2009 Broad Prize for Urban Education before registering a complaint. I admit I find it a bit delicious that a Broad Prize-winning school district would censor a website given the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, the only Website ever so honored. When a user attempted to access "No Child Left Behind: Costs and Benefits" by William J. Mathis Phi Delta Kappan, May 2003, they sent me a screen shot of this message that appeared on the computer screen.

=====================================
Access to this web page is restricted at this time

Your attempt to access the requested site may be in violation of Aldine ISD policy and has been restricted by the Technology Services Department.

December 22, 2011. Easiest way to disable Blue Coat proxy filter. NOT K9 - YouTube - This is the easiest way to stop blue coat proxy filter, needs no programs, and takes 2 minutes or less. Note: this doesn't work with k9. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksZAs1zPQ3A

Blue Coat has a long history of draconian and extremely corporate biased filtering. It is by no means the only one however as a brief look into the filtering of many products sold to the public to "protect" the family web surfing and provide parental oversight will show.
I think they must have all received their training/experience in the former USSR.

Obviously you need to educate yourself as to the technology involved and what Blue Coat provides. Blue Coat does not apply any corporate biased filtering. Blue Coat does not filter anything. Blue Coat simply provides methods to help enterprises to maintain their enterprise "Acceptable Use Policies”, protect users from malware, phishing sites, and access to child pornography, etc. They also save Wide Area Network / Internet bandwidth by caching frequently used content to contain costs. In addition, help enterprises manage network traffic to ensure business traffic remains at acceptable levels by reducing or restricting non business related traffic from consuming limited corporate bandwidth.

Sounds like a sales pitch, but this is what Blue Coat and the technology provides. Companies and people make the decisions on what to manage and or restrict and sometimes they simply make mistakes and block the wrong content. I suggest you simply ask for an explanation why a site is being blocked to your IT department or explain why you feel it should not be blocked and then request to have it unblocked. Then you will have your answer to whether this is truly draconian and extremely corporate biased filtering.

Blue coat creates categories for content, tags web pages for various categories, and then provides the technology to block (filter) web sites with those tags. Our web site is tagged as political/activist, while others covering the same ground are tagged as charitable (Heartland.Org), government/legal (US Chamber), news media (PhMRA, BIO), business/economy (ipi.org), entertainment (MPAA), education (CATO) etc. To suggest that "Blue Coat does not filter anything" ignores what its technologies are actually used for. Yes, Blue Coat does not force clients to use its filters, the clients choose to do so. But, it's Blue Coat that creates both the technology and the editorial decisions that make the filtering happen.